This invention relates to applicator dies and more particularly to an applicator die for use with a press to form a crimping machine for crimpingly securing terminals to the ends of leads.
Modern industry requires vast quantities of electrical leads with terminals crimpingly secured to the ends of the lead and many forms of applicator dies have been devised to perform the required crimping operation. Typically, the terminals to be crimped to the ends of the lead are provided in the form of a terminal strip comprising a plurality of serially arranged, interconnected terminals. The leads are fed individually to the die, and the die functions to crimpingly apply a terminal to the end of each lead and sever the terminal from the terminal strip in a manner to produce a continuous series of leads each having a terminal crimpingly secured to an end of the lead. Whereas many applicator dies have been proposed and are currently available, and whereas the various dies are generally satisfactory with respect to performing the required crimping operation, each applicator die tends to be dedicated or limited to use in one or possibly a select few of the available crimping machines and there is no one applicator die available that is suitable for use in all of the crimping machines in current usage.
Further, the available dies generally lack any means for ensuring that the leads are maintained in a positive predetermined orientation relative to the terminal feed path during the crimping operation so as to ensure a proper crimp and such mechanisms as are currently available to ensure such positive orientation are unduly complicated and expensive.